melanoptysis

Q; What is Melanoptysis?

Answer: Black pigmented  airway secretions

This question aims to guide students to use proper medical terms when describing, writing, and presenting patients, reports, and scientific papers.

Melena and Ptysis are Greek words meaning black and to spit.

The quality and density of soot-containing airway secretions during fire exposure, smoke inhalation, or pollution exposure can give a clinician clue to the level of exposure. Clinically, this is an important term to understand, as dense soot-containing airway secretions during fire and smoke may call for early intubation. Delay may cause vocal cord edema and lead to fatal airway collapse.

Melanoptysis is often described as exposure to pollution, coal dust, and smog. It is usually accompanied by Pneumoconiosis, as these patients typically have long-term lung exposure, which causes lung parenchyma to become pathologically blackened.

Other symptoms of fire exposure besides melanoptysis are cough, wheezing, hyperventilation followed by hypoventilation, erythema, hyperemia, and increased pulmonary shunting from lobar collapse or atelectasis.

#fire

#pulmonary

References/further readings:

1. Rehberg S, Maybauer MO, Enkhbaatar P, et al. Pathophysiology, management and treatment of smoke inhalation injury. Expert Rev Respir Med 2009; 3:283.

2. Kurahara Y, Shimatani Y. Melanoptysis. QJM. 2023 Jul 28;116(7):540-541. doi: 10.1093/qjmed/hcad042. PMID: 36944265.

3. Martínez-Girón R, Mosquera-Martínez J, Martínez-Torre S. Black-pigmented sputum. J Cytol. 2013 Oct;30(4):274-5. doi: 10.4103/0970-9371.126667. PMID: 24648674; PMCID: PMC3945631.